UK needs a museum of colonialism ... it’s being realistic about some of the really terrible things that happened in our past and teaching them to our children —@DalrympleWill
William Dalrymple, a journalist currently residing in in the "Orient", the same India that enriched his Scottish ancestors beyond their wildest dreams in the 18th century, pleads for, a "Museum of Colonialism", Just go to a Mirror and you have your Museum. For a member of a privileged colonial society to speak of Colonialism is not just graceless it is tinged with the very racism it seeks to excoriate, A Museum of Colonialism will only glorify the very essence of violence, racism and domination, that Colonialism represents by appropriating the language of criticism and political legitimacy by making indigenous people once more the objects of 'representational discourse" something that post colonial theory has been conniving at, for over two decades now and counting. We reject this ugly notion of a Museum of Colonialism as a means of rendering justice to over two hunderd years of unmitigated violence and tyranny.
Scottish historians have had a difficult task before them and Sir T M Devine exemplifies the difficulty in an honest manner, unlike William Dalrymple who seems quite ignorant of challenges faced by New Scottish Historiography which seeks to balance between imperial privilege enjoyed by Scotland after the Act of Union 1707 making it hugely prosperous within three decades of the Union and the inner tensions unleashed by that very Act. In short how is Scotland to account for its place in William Dalrymple's Museum of Colonialism. Was Scotland an Imperial power or merely an accessory to England's imperial enterprise. Imperial Historiography with its triumphalist flourish will find a new habitation in such exclusive spaces as Museums of Colonialism. And then is the question of Slavery and Slave Trade. The work of Catherine and Nicholas Draper have conclusively established Scottish presence in the Slave Trade, though the English Ports like Bristol and Liverpool handled more than 85% of the Slaving traffic. Scottish presence as Sir T M Devine points out was indirect and Scots were employed as Overseers, Surgeons and Accoutants in the Plantations of Trinidad and Jamaica. And when the Slave Compensation Data is analysed, Scottish claims are quite widespread. Given such a historical background we can do without the virtue signalling by journalists like William Dalrymple.
The book under review is a serious and well researched one. Roger Jeffery has put together a collection of essays that traverses in a lucid and elegant manner the two centuries of Scottish presence in India. Devine assimilates the presence of Scots in India to a "Diaspora" from Scotland. The term "Diaspora" is inaccurate as Scots migrated to places like India not out of compulsion but out of choice: to shake the pagoda tree and return with huge fortunes while their cousins tried to eke out a lving by investing in the Tobacco Trade with Virginia. The Scottish Administrators like Sir Thomas Munroe, Sir John Malcolmn, Robert Clive, and scores more returned to Scotland with a fortune of nearly 500,000 pounds and this money was extracted in India and transfered to Scotland only to be invested in urban properties, acqusition of Parliamentary seats and the like. George McGlivary, eschewing the charms of post colonial theory, follows the money trail and in his paper has shown that the fortunes made in India were transferred to Scotland through Agency Houses controlled by David Scott, William Fairlie, and the Barrings Bank had its roots in one such agency house. Another way by which Scots transferred their wealth from India to Scotland was to convert liquid cash into high value assets and we know that diamonds were carried back by returning Scots. Of course, many died in India, But William Dalrymple's Museum of Colonialism will gloss over such details because woke liberlism is only concerned with the optics and the rhetoric not the ugly reality.
On page 3, the chapter there is a strange remark that I would like to cntest. The authors claim that Edinburgh's reputation for heavy drug consumption in the nineteeth century is "unsourced". meaning that there is some ambiguity about the claim. Scotland gave the world the firm, Jardine and Matheson, the most notorious traffickers of narcotics in the nineteenth century and Opium sourced frm India was sent to China as payment for tea bought by the English against Silver. This triangular trade involving Sugar, Silver and Tea was financed by Opium and so obviously some of the Opium did reach a niche market in Scotland.
Some of the essays in this book deal with the vital issue: the large presence of Scots in the Administration of the East India Company in India. Almost all the Presidencies had Scottish Governors in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, before the ICS examination was introduced. In a study by John Mackenzie and T M Devine, Scotland and the British Empire, the authors on the basis of a study of 1267 Doctors wh were appointed to various posts in India between 1767 and 1815, 539 were Scots, nearly 43% of the total. A similar prosopographical study needs to be done fr the other appointments. Traditionally the argument given is that the English elite coopted the Scottish gentry by offering them lucrative posts in the company. The work of Holden Furber n Henry Dundas certainly substantiates this conclusion. And the gentry of course was not too unwilling a partner as it feared Jacobinism more than grieving over the loss of freedom. The University of Edinburgh played a major role in sending Administrators to India.
Some of the articles in this book particularly those by Frederike Voigt, Anne Buddle, and Henry Noltie deal with the acquisition of Indian Sculpture and botanical specimens from India. Scottish men working in India sent to Edinburgh a variety of Indian Art and the Scottish National Museum has a rich collection f Indian sculpture abstracted from India. The tranfrmation of religious icons into pieces of art, to be displayed in museums, was the direct result of imperial gaze and one wonders if Dalryple's Museum of Colonialism will still retain such stolen art. In the heyday of phrenlogy skulls became the objects through which Inteligence and Creativity were determined and Sir William Turner collected skulls from India, a Museum of Horrors to use Dalrymple's innane metaphor of museum, and his craniological researches were regared as some of the most accurate. Even Stephen Gould in his Mismeasure of Man refers to this "scientist".
Though I have been somewhat critical of the work, I must end by saying that almost all the papers published in this work are based on excellent research and the authors have generally avoided the banal decsent into Post Colonial theories and have not attempted to "provincialise Scotland".
William Dalrymple, a journalist currently residing in in the "Orient", the same India that enriched his Scottish ancestors beyond their wildest dreams in the 18th century, pleads for, a "Museum of Colonialism", Just go to a Mirror and you have your Museum. For a member of a privileged colonial society to speak of Colonialism is not just graceless it is tinged with the very racism it seeks to excoriate, A Museum of Colonialism will only glorify the very essence of violence, racism and domination, that Colonialism represents by appropriating the language of criticism and political legitimacy by making indigenous people once more the objects of 'representational discourse" something that post colonial theory has been conniving at, for over two decades now and counting. We reject this ugly notion of a Museum of Colonialism as a means of rendering justice to over two hunderd years of unmitigated violence and tyranny.
Scottish historians have had a difficult task before them and Sir T M Devine exemplifies the difficulty in an honest manner, unlike William Dalrymple who seems quite ignorant of challenges faced by New Scottish Historiography which seeks to balance between imperial privilege enjoyed by Scotland after the Act of Union 1707 making it hugely prosperous within three decades of the Union and the inner tensions unleashed by that very Act. In short how is Scotland to account for its place in William Dalrymple's Museum of Colonialism. Was Scotland an Imperial power or merely an accessory to England's imperial enterprise. Imperial Historiography with its triumphalist flourish will find a new habitation in such exclusive spaces as Museums of Colonialism. And then is the question of Slavery and Slave Trade. The work of Catherine and Nicholas Draper have conclusively established Scottish presence in the Slave Trade, though the English Ports like Bristol and Liverpool handled more than 85% of the Slaving traffic. Scottish presence as Sir T M Devine points out was indirect and Scots were employed as Overseers, Surgeons and Accoutants in the Plantations of Trinidad and Jamaica. And when the Slave Compensation Data is analysed, Scottish claims are quite widespread. Given such a historical background we can do without the virtue signalling by journalists like William Dalrymple.
The book under review is a serious and well researched one. Roger Jeffery has put together a collection of essays that traverses in a lucid and elegant manner the two centuries of Scottish presence in India. Devine assimilates the presence of Scots in India to a "Diaspora" from Scotland. The term "Diaspora" is inaccurate as Scots migrated to places like India not out of compulsion but out of choice: to shake the pagoda tree and return with huge fortunes while their cousins tried to eke out a lving by investing in the Tobacco Trade with Virginia. The Scottish Administrators like Sir Thomas Munroe, Sir John Malcolmn, Robert Clive, and scores more returned to Scotland with a fortune of nearly 500,000 pounds and this money was extracted in India and transfered to Scotland only to be invested in urban properties, acqusition of Parliamentary seats and the like. George McGlivary, eschewing the charms of post colonial theory, follows the money trail and in his paper has shown that the fortunes made in India were transferred to Scotland through Agency Houses controlled by David Scott, William Fairlie, and the Barrings Bank had its roots in one such agency house. Another way by which Scots transferred their wealth from India to Scotland was to convert liquid cash into high value assets and we know that diamonds were carried back by returning Scots. Of course, many died in India, But William Dalrymple's Museum of Colonialism will gloss over such details because woke liberlism is only concerned with the optics and the rhetoric not the ugly reality.
On page 3, the chapter there is a strange remark that I would like to cntest. The authors claim that Edinburgh's reputation for heavy drug consumption in the nineteeth century is "unsourced". meaning that there is some ambiguity about the claim. Scotland gave the world the firm, Jardine and Matheson, the most notorious traffickers of narcotics in the nineteenth century and Opium sourced frm India was sent to China as payment for tea bought by the English against Silver. This triangular trade involving Sugar, Silver and Tea was financed by Opium and so obviously some of the Opium did reach a niche market in Scotland.
Some of the essays in this book deal with the vital issue: the large presence of Scots in the Administration of the East India Company in India. Almost all the Presidencies had Scottish Governors in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, before the ICS examination was introduced. In a study by John Mackenzie and T M Devine, Scotland and the British Empire, the authors on the basis of a study of 1267 Doctors wh were appointed to various posts in India between 1767 and 1815, 539 were Scots, nearly 43% of the total. A similar prosopographical study needs to be done fr the other appointments. Traditionally the argument given is that the English elite coopted the Scottish gentry by offering them lucrative posts in the company. The work of Holden Furber n Henry Dundas certainly substantiates this conclusion. And the gentry of course was not too unwilling a partner as it feared Jacobinism more than grieving over the loss of freedom. The University of Edinburgh played a major role in sending Administrators to India.
Some of the articles in this book particularly those by Frederike Voigt, Anne Buddle, and Henry Noltie deal with the acquisition of Indian Sculpture and botanical specimens from India. Scottish men working in India sent to Edinburgh a variety of Indian Art and the Scottish National Museum has a rich collection f Indian sculpture abstracted from India. The tranfrmation of religious icons into pieces of art, to be displayed in museums, was the direct result of imperial gaze and one wonders if Dalryple's Museum of Colonialism will still retain such stolen art. In the heyday of phrenlogy skulls became the objects through which Inteligence and Creativity were determined and Sir William Turner collected skulls from India, a Museum of Horrors to use Dalrymple's innane metaphor of museum, and his craniological researches were regared as some of the most accurate. Even Stephen Gould in his Mismeasure of Man refers to this "scientist".
Though I have been somewhat critical of the work, I must end by saying that almost all the papers published in this work are based on excellent research and the authors have generally avoided the banal decsent into Post Colonial theories and have not attempted to "provincialise Scotland".
